Our Society Juggles Us
Mood:  don't ask

            Juggling to me, is a lens through which life can be viewed.  The world is full of chaos.  In nature, movement seemingly occurs at random.  However, humans, whether they know it or not, are expert jugglers.  As the most intelligent mammals on earth, we have figured out how to arrange the chaos of nature into predictable patterns.  Every day, we are willingly juggled by patterns of our own invention - public transportation, alarm clocks, work schedules, e-mail, television.  Life can be accomplished because we have created patterns in which we are juggled.  We could just as easily drop the pattern but why bother?  Its precision is comfortable.

            I guess jugglers are those who are in tune with the true beauty and genius in what most people don't even realize they're doing.  The creation of pattern out of chaos tickles jugglers, which is why we go looking for chaos that nature didn't necessarily even intend.

           Of course juggling is one of these forms of chaos.  We as jugglers thrive on discovering solutions for various degrees of chaos.  One of the most basic starting levels of chaos we encounter is the predictable handling of three balls by only two hands.  If this goes well, we will search for harder forms of chaos to contain and practice and practice until our brain has sorted the chaos into patterns.

          My own juggling continues to evolve from the more accepted forms of controlled chaos.  As a kinetic artist, I am constantly looking for new forms of chaos to control, often with the added hope that these solutions will prove to be visually pleasing.  I like to play with speed, space, shape, and surprise.  With my whee-lo routine, I enjoyed the fact that the whee-los, because of magnets, fell so slow towards the ground.  In my leash-ball routine, I was able to explore space without the use of my hands.  My half rings excited me artistically because I was forced to deal with a shape I wasn't used to.  And lastly, my puppet routine allowed me to be surprised by what my own hands were doing.

          Spend a day looking at life through this juggling lens.  You'll be surprised at how well people juggle themselves through their daily series of patterns.